Jessica Warman

My father is an apparition, and my mother is semiconscious.

I'm not mean, I'm honest. Nobody is ever straightforward. But sometimes people need to hear the truth.

I remember my brother as such a gentle and loving child, the best big brother a girl could hope for, but I remember when I started to sense our family's world tilting on its axis, the kaleidoscope turning, when things started to go wrong. From then on, it was like we were still ourselves, but our lives played out as though reflected back to us from a funhouse mirror.

Cops, I've learned, are like vampires; they can't come in unless you invite them.

I realise now that I wanted to disappear. To get so lost that nobody ever found me. To go so far away that I'd never be able to make my way home again. But I have no idea why.

It had started snowing, a thick wet layer of slush that won't stick. There are no cars on the road, nothing but big white flakes falling onto our faces, erasing the buildings around us, and the low swish of our feet on the road as we try to keep our footing, a soft wheeze humming from the bottom of my lungs from too much smoking.In the middle of Nation Road, Mazzie turns to me without any warning. She grabs my arm and we both fall down, and then we're sitting there in the middle of the bare road, and for a few seconds we just sit there, quite, listening to the eerie silent noise of snow falling against land.Snow covers Mazzie's eyelashes, making her look like a tiny ice princess_ the closest she will ever come to wearing makeup."You look pretty," I say."Shut up.